Top 10s

Sonic Youth’s Top 10

Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Steve Shelley ganged up for this Criterion top ten—or twelve, as it turned out. The New York–based no wavers have been making music together since 1981. Their albums include Daydream Nation, Goo, Dirty, Rather Ripped, and this year’s The Eternal, their first not on a major label in more than twenty years.

Yasujiro Ozu

A couple of years ago, I finally discovered Ozu’s work, starting with this film. The stories are beautiful, yes, and the filmmaking is exquisite. I’d recommend any/all of the late films and will use this one as an example. Many of the actors and crew worked with Ozu on many of these late films, so they all feel interrelated, small stories of intimate life in Japan in the fifies and sixties. Also recommended: Early Spring, Late Autumn, The End of Summer. —Lee Ranaldo

Chantal Akerman

This amazing, epic film put the Belgian director Akerman on the map. Three hours of static shots and Robbe-Grillet-style repetitive minimalism, revolving around a middle-aged prostitute in a suburban house. This amazing film is a landmark of seventies art cinema. —LR

Jean-Luc Godard

Godard’s films are the ultimate (even when I have a hard time sitting through one). They are among the greatest works in cinema, and he continues to turn out provocative and amazing films. All are worth seeing; this is one of my favorites from his early years—radical filmmaking, pop culture, politics: the children of Marx and Coca-Cola, indeed. —LR

George Sluizer

Totally unnerving psychodrama where a man’s girlfriend is abducted and, after searching for her for three years, he begins to receive messages from the abductor. And then it gets veeerrry weird. Sluizer also directed a film called Dark Blood, which would be interesting to find. —TM

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Marcel Camus

Set in the favela during Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Black Orpheus is based on a play by Vinícius de Moraes (one of the cowriters, along with Baden Powell, of one of my favorite Brazilian LPs, Os Afro-Sambas) and adapted from the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, featuring a continuous musical and percussive soundtrack by Antonio Carlos Jobim—music flows with the story and Carnival clatters and bumps along as this tragedy unfolds. This beautifully colorful masterpiece won the 1959 Academy Award for best foreign language film. —Steve Shelley

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder’s first film after Sunset Boulevard possibly seems more relevant in today’s tabloid news world than when it was released in 1951. Starring Kirk Douglas, the film takes place in New Mexico as a three-ring media circus develops while a man is trapped helplessly in a cave. —SS

Catherine Breillat

Terrence Malick

This is one of the most beautifully filmed movies ever and maybe Haskell Wexler’s best work as a cinematographer. [Nestor Almendros was credited as Days of Heaven’s cinematographer; Wexler provided additional photography.] —KG